Daughter slain for having sex was still a virgin

September 8 2002
The Sun-Herald

A Jordanian father who suspected his daughter of having sex before marriage shot her dead in one of two new "honour killings".

An autopsy later revealed the girl was still a virgin. The Jordan Times quoted officials as saying that, in the third such killing this week, the 17-year-old girl had been detained by police in Amman to protect her from family members who believed she was having sex. She was released on Wednesday after her father signed a declaration promising that he would not harm her. However, shortly afterwards, he shot her dead.

In another incident yesterday, a 28-year-old woman was stabbed to death with a hatchet and a knife in her Amman home by her older brother, who complained he could not tolerate rumours spread by friends and neighbours about his sister's sexual relations. The two latest cases raise to three the number of woman slain over the past week in the spate of so-called "honour crimes".

The third was a 24-year-old woman strangled by her 20-year-old brother with a telephone cord at their parents' house on Sunday night after her family learned she had become pregnant before she married her husband.